Sim Bully on your child’s computer

Researchers develop a software tool to help victims of bullying develop …

Bullying is a tough issue. Studies have revealed that victims of chronic bullying end up being consistently less healthy over the long term. However, people's response to victims of bullying range from dismissive (harden up already) to acting as bullies themselves (show me who teased you, Timmy, and I'll give them what-for). It gets even more complex when one considers that children are devious, and bullying doesn't always result in physical scars.

Now, as a result of my history as a victim of bullying and now having a daughter who is exiting her third year as the victim of bullying, I am not a dispassionate observer in this. I want solutions. Specifically, I either want the bullying to stop—not realistic—or I want ways to help my daughter cope with and escape from bullies.

So, it was timely that the EU's science funding agency chose to highlight the Victec program, led by Ruth Aylett at Hariet-Watt University. The aim of the Victec program is to develop game-like environments that allow victims of bullying to try to develop strategies for escaping from it by experimenting with different responses. After a bit of searching, I managed to locate a recent publication from the collaboration, and the results are what I would classify as tentatively useful.

Building a virtual playground

First, let's start with the technology, called FearNot! (Fun with Empathic Agents to Reach Novel Outcomes in Teaching—science and acronyms, UR TRYING TOO HARD). The researchers created a virtual school environment and populated it with children who fell into three classes: bully, bystander, and victim. The environment and models were made realistic enough to engage the children and allow them to identify with the characters.

The characters themselves were endowed with artificial intelligence that allowed them to modify their behavior in response to the success or failure of previous stratagems. This also added a random element to the environment, so the children using the software encountered a variety of situations and didn't end up simply replaying the same set of scenarios.

To make it as realistic as possible, the researchers used literature studies of bully-victim interactions to build up a basic repertoire of behavior for all classes of characters. The characters could then choose which behaviors to initiate and when. In addition, the characters showed their emotions, so the users could, in some sense, see inside their minds.

The FearNot! software could be used in two ways: passive observation, or playing the role of an invisible friend by suggesting different strategies to victims. The basic idea is two-fold. First, victims get to look down on the situation to see how it plays out in a broader context, getting a better understanding of where events are heading. Hopefully, they can then apply this knowledge. The second is that they can suggest that the characters test different responses to being victimized, seeing which are successful and lead to the bully giving up without having to actually risk experimenting in real life.

Real world testing

It sounds kind of cool, but how did it go? The researchers put it to test in a set of state primary schools in the UK and Germany. The kids enrolled in the study were aged between seven and ten, and selected either for a control group or a group that was allowed to use the FearNot! software. The schools were visited by the researchers, who provided an in-class lesson on bullying so that everyone had a common understanding of what counts as bullying. The children were then asked to self-report on bullying before, and at intervals during, their time using the FearNot! software.

The results were a qualified success. The researchers found that the first tests after using FearNot! showed a statistically significant group of children had escaped from their bullies. However, later tests showed no further improvement. On closer inspection, the researchers found that there was a significant difference between the responses of German and UK children. When analyzed separately, they found that the follow-up tests showed that more UK children continued to escape their bullies, but this was not the case for German children.

The overall success was not especially good, coming in at around one in five kids escaping victimization compared to the control group. But there are some caveats—that one in five is from groups of children that were already classified as being (or at risk of being) bullied. Furthermore, the results were taken over a very short reporting period, so there is no data on sustained success.

Adding to the caveats are other, smaller problems: the researchers could not use a completely randomized selection between the control and non-control groups because not all schools had access to computers adequate to run the software. Every school reported problems with the software at some point (e.g., crashes), so the children had less time with the software than planned.

Another interesting finding was that UK school children and teachers have far more experience using computers, experienced fewer problems, and had higher expectations for success than their German counterparts. Surprisingly enough, the final results of the study bear this out, with UK children having better experiences, and UK teachers rating the software's usefulness higher.

On a more basic level, the approach seems to assume that bullies are irredeemably evil and that it is more effective to teach the victim to avoid being victimized than it is to try and inject empathy into the life of a bully. I have some sympathy with the practicalities of this approach because, frankly, current victims are more important than future potential victims. But, at the same time, it has the potential to turn into a game of "blame the victim," which worries me a lot.

In general though, I suspect that most child bullies stop being bullies at some point, while those who don't go on to be crappy managers. So maybe this is the right direction.

Finally, there will be those who shout "Improve the teachers! Where are the parents?" and other such generalities. The key thing to remember is that bullies don't perform on demand. It is a lucky parent that catches a bully in the act, allowing them to take direct action. Teachers have more power, particularly over the more subtle forms of bullying, but even then, the teacher is not everywhere. So, yeah, parents and teachers can usually only take action after the fact, or try to prepare children. FearNot! seems to provide a bit of extra support for teachers and parents in preparing children, and I suspect that, used consistently, it might even be helpful.

Chris Lee / Chris writes for Ars Technica's science section. A physicist by day and science writer by night, he specializes in quantum physics and optics. He lives and works in Eindhoven, the Netherlands.